


the fate of poets in a republic

by FerusAurelius



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Mass Effect Headcanons, Mentions of Hanar Poetry, One Shot, Platonic Relationships, Translation, Turian Headcanons, Turians, Why Turians Sound Like Romans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25658911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FerusAurelius/pseuds/FerusAurelius
Summary: Why turians sound like a weird Latin conlang in Mass Effect.
Relationships: Original Female Human Character(s) & Original Turian Male Character(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 20





	the fate of poets in a republic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BronzeAgeLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BronzeAgeLove/gifts).



> So [BronzeAgeLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BronzeAgeLove/pseuds/BronzeAgeLove) and I were agreeing that turians probably don't have human-pronounceable words. And then I started thinking about how one _would_ go about working around the limits of machine translation. Which lead to considering why and how turians sound like a weird Latin conlang throughout the game (other than typical sci-fi handwaving).
> 
> This is the result.

She cannot be expected to work with this monster. Seven feet of spines and steel!

Even fitted with a new sub-dermal implant—permitted by the alien Citadel government—to bypass the problems of encoding their tonal growling, their whistled and clicked animal language, she does not want to breathe the same recycled air as this turian.

Back when the Systems Alliance had considered them a priority threat, she'd volunteered for the team that had first deciphered their grammar. Her motivation to understand these creatures disappeared when her sister’s husband was murdered on Shanxi.

Her Alliance handlers will not tell her the details, but she has seen the newsvids.

How could they do it? These _skullfaces_. Raining orbital debris and death on people who had done nothing more than scavenge for food in the rubble.

Marina Rossetti is a professional, but there are limits to courtesy. 

* * *

Syrus has done nothing to make the small human woman angry, but the banked hatred simmering in her eyes needs no interpretation.

He would sit and make himself smaller if he could, but he is large even for a turian and his fringe near brushes the low ceiling of the office they have been given to commence their task.

Arcturus _station_? Hah! More like a mining outpost than a respectable military installation. 

He would know. 

He completed his mandatory service in the small Hierarchy diplomatic corps on the Citadel, a trusted advisor to the turian Councilor. Called in to interpret difficult technical treaty language into turian contexts. He is the author of three books and the official translator of Kahje’s poet laureate. Most recently, he has been in charge of updating the Hanar-Turian codexes, widely regarded as the most difficult linguistic assignment in Citadel space.

This is a first contact—the first in his lifetime—and a chance to shape how his people will be perceived in a wholly new language. It should be exciting.

He dreads every meeting.

The Hierarchy brass responsible for the Relay 314 Incident killed his best chances for a positive cultural exchange when the first satellites dropped on human colonists.

Some helpful incompetent has also leaked his name and assignment to the turian press, so now he receives a steady stream of extranet hatemail and death threats with his morning kava.

Until a week ago, he had never needed to travel under guard. Never considered that one of his own people might put a bullet in his head.

He can already feel the migraine coming on.

They are meant to be the leaders of this translation team, and by the Spirits he will do his job even if this human would like nothing better than to flay his plates from his skin. Even if his sister on Palaven will not take his calls.

* * *

It is the youngsters who give them a way out.

Marina watches as Simon Asilek, a graduate of the Systems Alliance Intelligence translation program, his expression entirely serious, turns his datapad around so that his equally young turian counterpart can gape at a picture of an eagle.

She has begun to be able to read turian body language. The surprise in lifted facial plates, the twitch of a mandible in a quiet comment, the concern or anxiety when they are near motionless.

Syrus—older, reserved, careful about how he moves in smaller spaces designed for humans, always so precise in his language, so patient in his attempts to produce human sounds—watches the exchange from a safe distance across the room. 

Marina hates that she knows the tilt of his head, the looseness of his mandibles, means that he is laughing in his own understated way.

* * *

Her hands are warm on his throat. Syrus articulates the sounds Marina requests of him, enunciating patiently so that she can feel how his secondary voicebox affects modulation.

She is so much shorter that he is kneeling to make her investigation possible, his spurs tucked uncomfortably beneath him.

He cannot remember when he first learned that she had family on Shanxi. Or when she first realized that his turian guard complement wasn’t a Hierarchy power play meant to intimidate the human station personnel. Just that she started walking with him on his way back to his borrowed quarters. That his security detail stopped hassling her when she did.

When Marina asked him if he might consider allowing her to diagram the structures and anatomy of turian speech production, he had at first offered her his own school texts to study.

He supposes he should have anticipated the likely consequences of that line of inquiry even then.

Now, his extremely undignified position is attracting stares from the rest of the team.

The youngsters spend most of the day chittering at him from behind their hands. The students are inveterate gossips. Without much consideration for the fact that Marina’s hands are still near his jaw, Syrus growls at them in a vain attempt to administer discipline.

When he looks back at her, she is frozen with her fingers close enough to touch his bared teeth.

* * *

Marina has to ask Syrus to repeat himself the first time he asks the question. He wants to know about the ancient human civilization with the eagle standard. The Romans. 

_Why?_ She asks him. _Why do you want to know?_

He tells her about the connotations of hanar words for turian ideas. The efforts Citadel linguists make to translate context as well as the sense of a thing, the borrowing of cultural tenets. To the hanar, turians are translated as a new-voyaging, decisive, bright tribe ever traveling toward an unknowable and unexplored horizon.

Syrus, proving once again that he is not to be underestimated, recites a hanar poem about the ever-changing waters of their homeworld with such measured self-possession that it leaves her stunned.

Marina transfers an English translation of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ to his omni-tool.

* * *

Syrus discovers that these _Romans_ are not much like his people after all.

But their language? The sounds and syllables of _Latin._ Those he can use. 

The Hierarchy is old in comparison to the Systems Alliance, and Marina tells him that Rome was a much studied Empire on their homeworld, Earth. They will translate the ways of his people with such a tone, giving humanity a way to access and pronounce concepts in something like the language of these venerable philosopher-emperors.

He is particularly fond of the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius and, he confides in her, he has already begun working on a translation into turian.

Syrus offers—carefully, without letting his expression betray him—to give human concepts the flavor of turian political rhetoric. Measured, respected, decisive. A style that rings with life to turian ears.

Spirits, his sister is never going to speak to him again.

* * *

They approximate turian phonemes into something resembling Latin, with a few additions to cover the broader range of sounds. 

When they finish updating the Human-Turian extranet codex, Marina learns that Syrus is more properly Syrus Madina. Forty-three. A native of Palaven. A renowned turian author and translator of Kahje’s most famous living hanar poet, Elliasande.

 _Why did you never tell me?_ She wonders, remembering his face as he recited. _That the translation was yours?_

**Author's Note:**

> So turians sound like uptight Romans to humans, and humans sound like impassioned classical orators to turians. 
> 
> In my head this is why Councilor Sparatus always looks so discomfited when Shepard speaks! ;)


End file.
